Books

The aim of this book is to deconstruct Luther’s famous phrase, simul justus et peccator. Man as a sinner is first taken as a (so called) concept that contemporary thinking does not deal with, in order to make us better go forward in an heap of thoughts without any beacon, to flee from the fear of thinking. It has then rebuilt itself in the model of agent imagination as reality and event principle. In imagination thinking, imagination is a soul. How can I access to my righteous nature knowing that I am a sinner? To the certainty of being a sinner comes a grace located between the visible world and the invisible one, in which time is suspended. Imagination is a soul and images are life’s metaphors. The imaginal world is located between the perceptible world and the imaginal world, between the spiritual and the corporal. We are invited to travel in the light of Iranian mysticism.

Agent imagination is viewed according to the metamorphosis principle. The imaginal, as an “I” instance, changes according to the plane in which the subject is situated. Justification implies metamorphoses of the subject, who finds its identity in relying on God.

This analysis, as an integral approach, rejects the conception as man as sinner in the frame of a dualism between the perceptible and the intelligible, between matter and mind. This reversal, as attractive as it may be, makes simplifications where duality delimits the era of a metaphysic whose decay has taken place in our age.

The main actors of a famous colloquium, which took place in Juvisy in 1933, were Maurice Blondel, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, Étienne Gilson, Édith Stein and many other celebrities. The question was “Is there a Christian philosophy?”

In an article that has remained famous, two years before, in 1931, Émile Bréhier denied the existence of a Christian philosophy in theses terms: “After all, we did not find it neither by Saint Augustine, who firmly makes the separation between the Word made flesh from the philosophers’ reason, nor by saint Thomas, who only lets for reason a precarious existence, neither by the 17th century rationalists, whose doctrine, going toward natural religion, looses contact with Christianity, nor by the 19th century philosophers, whose Christian philosophy quickly bends towards a sort of humanism.”

The main actors of a famous colloquium, which took place in Juvisy in 1933, were Maurice Blondel, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, Étienne Gilson, Édith Stein and many other celebrities. The question was “Is there a Christian philosophy?”

In an article that has remained famous, two years before, in 1931, Émile Bréhier denied the existence of a Christian philosophy in theses terms: “After all, we did not find it neither by Saint Augustine, who firmly makes the separation between the Word made flesh from the philosophers’ reason, nor by saint Thomas, who only lets for reason a precarious existence, neither by the 17th century rationalists, whose doctrine, going toward natural religion, looses contact with Christianity, nor by the 19th century philosophers, whose Christian philosophy quickly bends towards a sort of humanism.”

Assuredly Karl Bath and Hans Urs von Balthazar have been influenced by Søren Kierkegaard, sometimes called “the father of existentialism”. The first clearly asserts it in The Epistle to the Romans, while the latter does not cast any doubt in The Christian and Anxiety. Yet both of them have been claimed to be “Hegelians”, even when Kierkegaard was fiercely opposed to Hegel and his “system”.

This book takes up texts so as to study the reception of Kierkegaard in the works of theses two great theologians through the problematic, very important for both of them, of the real and the possible.

This book presents the retake of Kierkegaard and his existentialism, while showing in what extend Barth and Balthazar have gone beyond.

Institutions and depositions of the Totality

This book collects the papers for a symposium which took place from the 24th to the 26th of September 2015, entitled Institutions and depositions of the Totality. Exploring the works of Christian Godin. This symposium took place in two locations: on the first day, the 24th of April, it was held at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Clermont-Ferrand; thereafter, it lasted a day and half at the Université Paris-Descartes, in the premises of the Sorbonne, on the 25th and 26th of September.

The term “institution” immediately suggests the establishment of a principle from which some economics deploys itself. This principle, or axiom, would be an invariant set up as something inspiring respect, fear and deference, something untouchable by the unforeseeable. But “deposition”, which comes immediately after, would affirm that such a principle could seem transitory. The plural form indicates that the totality establishes and deposes itself through various modes. That being said, a question straight away emerges: how a principle that bequeaths a space of intelligibility can be dissolved, disintegrated, dismantled?

This symposium attempts to answer to this issue.

An analysis of passing

Book that collects the papers for a symposium which took place from the 5th to the 7th of July 2014 in Chevilly-Larue, and entitled An analysis of passing. Meetings and Confrontations with Emmanuel Falque. This symposium was held under the aegis of the École Franciscaine de Paris (Franciscan School of Paris).

The topic deals with the issue of passing in the works of Emmanuel Falque, from various and complementary points of view, following a division that reflects the key features of his works.

The works’ existential dimension: Le triduum philosophique gathers the personal works (Le Passeur de Gethsémani ; Métamorphose de la finitude[1] ; Les Noces de l’Agneau[2]). Finitude and incarnation puts us in front of the “who” of the incarnation, which is one of those answered questions. The one who became flesh is not the divinity itself (the divine nature). It is neither God the Father nor God the Holy Spirit, but God the Son precisely. Where does the Rubicon flow? deals with connections between theology and philosophy in his book Passer le Rubicon[3]. Does fording represent crossing or transgression?

The Phenomenological disputes confront the destiny of the history of philosophy as an “amorous combat”, which is the title of Emmanuel Falque’s last book. It is about a debate between some thinkers indulging in a real philosophical disputatio based on the famous “theological watershed of French phenomenology”. Facing the logic of clash between philosophy and theology, Emmanuel Falque invites to a real dialogue and, at the same time, a real confrontation between these two disciplines. Several authors are summoned on the stage of the “phenomenology of limits”: Jacques Derrida, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Lévinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Claude Romano, Jean Greisch.

Theological approaches show that analogy, liturgy and pastoral have necessarily to be understood through their relation to body, while Medieval roaming refers to Emmanuel Falque’s first steps in philosophy and theology: Anselm, Bonaventure.

[1]This book has been translated in English: The Metamorphosis of Finitude: An Essay on Birth and Resurrection, translated by HUGHES Georges, Fordham University Press, FUP, 2012, 214 p.

[2]This book has been translated in English: The Wedding Feats of the Lamb: Eros, the Body and the Eucharist, translated by HUGHES Georges, Fordham University Press, FUP, 2016, 336 p.

[3]This book has been translated in English: Crossing the Rubicon: The Borderlands of Philosophy and Theology, translated by SHANK Reuben, Fordham University Press, FUP, 2016, 216 p.

Who are you ?

Peculiarity, relationship, personal identity

Philosophy has favoured for a long time the “who am I?” question and scientific anthropology the “who is he?” question. It would be better to use the interrogative analysis, paying attention to a generally underestimated type of questioning, the « who » question and especially this one: “who are you?”. “Who do you say I am?”. Any philosophy, any theology does not know how to identify the peculiarity bearers: the voice, the face, the vocation, interpersonal relationship… But we should keep in the singular the logic it deserves and not reduce it to the particular or the individual.

The question of Salvation

Is the salvation of man without God possible?

Henri de Lubac described formerly the “drama of atheistic humanism”. Nowadays, the secularisation has bluntly taken on to the very idea of salvation. The forgotten fundamentals have been evoked back: “to be saved”, “to be a saved one”, what in me needs to be saved and to be saved from what?

These fundamentals make up the presuppositions of our question: is it possible to anthropologically reduce what is salutary and saving? There were of course other aspects of the soteriological dimension.

An essential concern is at stake between God and man; they are correlative for ever and we can talk, like Alice in Wonderland, of a “smile without a cat”. The question, as it is set today, is contemporary of an absolute atheism which pretends to pull itself through limited means, aggravated by a call to apostasy.